# CoreDNS

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/coredns/  
**Website:** https://coredns.io/  
**APIs profiled:** 5

CoreDNS is a CNCF graduated DNS server written in Go that serves as the default DNS service for Kubernetes clusters. It is flexible and extensible through a plugin architecture, supporting DNS-based service discovery, forwarding, caching, and integration with etcd, Kubernetes, and other backends. CoreDNS can serve as an authoritative DNS server or a recursive resolver, with HTTP plugins exposing health, readiness, and Prometheus metrics endpoints for Kubernetes operations.

## Kin Score — 37.4 / 100 (thin)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 37.4).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 72.2 |
| Contract Quality | 51.7 |
| Governance | 60.6 |
| Contract Governance | 60.6 |
| Operational Transparency | 36.8 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 26.2 |
| Commercial Clarity | 0.0 |
| Access Clarity | 0.0 |

## Agent readiness — 31.6 (agent-aware)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| Reversibility Documented | na |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | no |
| Idempotency | na |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | verified |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | na |

## Access

Free — onboarding: unknown, pricing: free, trial: no (confidence: medium).

## APIs (5)

- **CoreDNS DNS Interface** — CoreDNS implements the standard DNS protocol (RFC 1035) serving both UDP and TCP queries. In Kubernetes, it resolves service names to cluster IPs, headless services to pod IPs, ...
- **CoreDNS Plugin API** — The CoreDNS plugin framework allows extending DNS server functionality through a chain of plugins defined in the Corefile configuration. External plugins can be written in Go to...
- **CoreDNS Health API** — Health check endpoints used by Kubernetes liveness and readiness probes to assess the operational state of the CoreDNS process.
- **CoreDNS Metrics API** — Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoints exposing DNS query statistics, cache performance, latency histograms, and build information.
- **CoreDNS Ready API** — Readiness check endpoints that indicate whether CoreDNS plugins have finished initializing and are ready to serve DNS queries.

## Agentic access (1)

- **Coredns Agentic Access** — 3 operations

## Security (1)

- **Coredns Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC

## Plans (1)

- **Coredns Plans Pricing**

## Tags

Apache 2.0, Cloud-Native, CNCF, DNS, Go, Graduated, Kubernetes, Networking, Open-Source, Plugins, Prometheus, Service Discovery

---

Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/coredns/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.